


Rolling Stones

by mothergoose



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: ? - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Historical, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hippie AU, Homophobia, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-24 22:08:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3786022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mothergoose/pseuds/mothergoose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a school project, Fey asks her grandparents what it was like to live and love during the 1960s and 1970s. For Cecil and Carlos though, it brings them back to when they met, in 1965 as two anti-war activists going where they may. Historical AU!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A wonderful thank you to secretsofluftnarp(luftie) for betaing this first chapter! Go check out their work,they are amazing! :)

May 14, 2014

“Turn the heat down, honey. You’re gonna burn it.” Grampa called over his shoulder as he carried a basket of laundry into the laundry room. Fey turned the heat down and watched as the corn bread baked in the oven.

Fey was staying at her grandparents house while her mother, Janice, and her father were out of town for a wedding. The air was stifling and because her grandparents didn’t believe in AC, they were all huddled in the kitchen near the fans. Behind her, her brother was studying with her abuelo and she heard Marv nervously tap his feet on the white linoleum floor. “Uh…” he trailed, “An isotope is… when… an element has different neutrons?” Fey turned to see her abuelo smile and hum an affirmative, before sliding the index card back to the back of pile.

“Abuelo?” Fey asked, chewing on her lip. The two at the table looked over at her and she suddenly felt self-conscious. She had been avoiding this project for a while but it was due in a week and she really needed to do it. All she had to do was ask her grandparents if they remembered any major events from after WWII and then make a powerpoint about it. Easy. But first she had to ask them.

She heard her grampa close the lid to the washer in the laundry room and she leaned against the oven, feeling it radiate heat. Wetting her lips, she rushed, “I have this report I have to do, where I ask, like, you and grampa if you guys saw anything, or you know, remembered anything from the 60s or 70s or something. Did you guys do or see any, like, major events or anything?”

Her abuelo stared at her and let out an elegant, “Uh…”

She grimaced and shifted uneasily on her feet.

“What’s the matter?” Fey let out a relieved sigh; Grampa always was better with words than abuelo and she cursed herself for not waiting until grampa was back in the room. But she got nervous and jumped the gun.

“Fey’s doing this project where she needs to know if we remembered any major events from when we were younger,” Abuelo explained, setting Marv’s index cards down. Grampa’s eyebrows rose high and he smiled mischievously.

Setting the basket of warm laundry down, Grampa started folding while he spoke. “Oh creators, did we ever! The 60s and 70s, man. You remember what we got into?” Abuelo pushed his glasses to the top of his head and rubbed his eyes.

“Cecil, they don’t need to know that.”

“Hey!” Marv suddenly piped up and the other three looked over at him in surprise. Grinning wickedly, he burst, “Mom won’t tell us how you guys met. She says it’s too ‘crazy’. Will you tell us? I just wanna know what was so crazy.”

Fey nodded her head in agreement. Her mother was terribly tight-lipped about how her abuelo and grampa got together and all the things that went with it. Janice said it wasn’t taboo, but “is just a story that grampa and abuelo will tell you yourself someday.” And dammit all, if today was not that day.

Abuelo held up his hands in protest, his glasses slipping back down to his nose. He looked distressed. “You kids are too young for this type of stuff-”

“Oh, Carlos, stop.” Grampa waved a sock at abuelo, his yellow nail polish contrasting against the dark material. He searched for the second sock and ask, “Fey? You’re, what, 17 now, honey? And Marv, you just turned 16.” Gazing down pointedly at abuelo over his glasses, grampa countered, “When we were their age, we were out on our own, getting into all sorts of er,” he trailed, waving the socks in his hand, before settling on, “legal trouble.”

Marv frowned. “Legal trouble?”

Abuelo sighed in defeat and stood up, cracking his back. As he reached for a bowl in the cabinet, he explained, “I think your grandfather means _illegal_ trouble.” Abuelo shot grampa a look and poured some potato chips. Fey saw her grampa wink and smile sweetly at him. She grinned at Marv, who in turn, grinned back.

“Whoa.”

“Marv, why don’t you get the lemonade from the fridge and we’ll take this outside?” Grampa suggested and Marv moved out of his seat so fast that Fey swore she saw smoke billow from his heels. “Fey,” she jerked at her own name being called. Grampa was putting the folded clothes back into the basket, while abuelo stared at him. Her grampa smiled at her and said, “Go get your phone or notebook or whatever, so you can write this down.” Abuelo looked scandalized. “You’ll need this for your report right?”

“Oh.” Fey looked between her grandparents and got the picture. “Right.” She walked into the adjacent living room but hid near the doorway so she could hear the two of them talk. Despite the feeling of guilt from eavesdropping on them, Fey still wanted to hear them.

In a low voice, abuelo spoke rapidly. “Are you really gonna tell them all the stuff we did Ceec? I mean we did a lotta stuff and went a lotta places but do we need them to know everything?”

Her grampa’s deep bass reverberated around the room as he chuckled. She loved hearing her grampa talk; she was certain that was how he got his job, using his dark voice to weave strange tales about the mystery town “Nightvale” on WZZZ. Fey leaned in to catch the conversation.

“It’s important for them to know what type of people we once were Carlos. And what we did and how we did it. There is no shame in it.” She heard abuelo sigh. “Plus, it gives me an excuse to show them all the dorky things you used to wear!”

“I used to wear!” Her abuelo sputtered and she heard her grampa kiss him, as she finally moved away.

__________

They were all settled on the porch, lemonade in hand, photo albums spread out, and recorder at the ready, when Fey prompted her grandparents. “So?” She grinned and crossed her legs.

“So…” Abuelo sighed and watched a car go by. “Where do we begin?”

Grampa finished crunching on a potato chip and licked his fingers. “Well why don’t we start when we met? What year was that, babe?”

Another car went by and abuelo reached out for grampa’s hand.

“Silly. It was 1965…”

**  
  
  
  
  
**


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning! Mild internalized homophobia and mentions of drug use.

May 20, 1965

Carlos drummed his fingers against the steering wheel of his van, bobbing his head to _Do You Believe in Magic?_ as it played on the radio. The air was crisp and the cool wind whipped through the open windows, bringing with it the smell of rain. Berkeley whizzed by and Carlos saw people strolling on the sidewalks as he rolled to stop. 

“Hey, man.” Dave blew some smoke out the window and Carlos carefully watched the traffic light. In the back of the van, Leland tuned his guitar and Rochelle was packaging some brownies and a few sugar cubes. After all, they needed to make some money at the rally and this was the best way. The light turned green and Dave turned to the driver. “When are we gettin’ there?” 

Carlos slowed the car, letting a couple and their dog cross the street, eyes peeled for similar vans. He glanced over at Dave and said, “It’s right up there. Like 10 minutes.” Satisfied, Dave leaned back and turned the radio up, letting the next song roll over them in a familiar wave. 

The ‘team’, as they liked to call themselves, had traveled from San Francisco to Berkeley after word had spread of a massive teach-in at the university there. It was supposed to be the big scene of the day and Carlos couldn’t wait to sink his teeth into some good, hard intellectually stimulating conversation. With the onset of the war in Vietnam, he and the rest of the team had become discouraged with the way the government was handling the communists and all were dying to really meet and mingle with like minded people. And the music and festive atmosphere was always a huge bonus. All in all, as soon as Telegraph Avenue came into view, Carlos’ spirits rose at the sight of all the people gathered there.   
__________

Everywhere you looked, young people from all walks of life were crowded together talking, laughing, singing, and debating. Carlos thought it strange to see some students dressed to the nines, with collared shirts and shiny, black shoes, engaged in serious talks with barefooted students wearing beads in their hair. Still, it made it easy for him to sell all the brownies that he had and now he was just soaking up all the conversations that floated around him.

Wandering through the throngs of people, he wondered when the next speech would begin and caught the sound of an intense discussion on the validity of the DDT debate and, as some women tried to discuss, the link between the environment and feminism. Carlos lit up at the thought a scientifically backed debate. His type of argument.

He drew closer, moving into the circle of modern day rebels, and found himself near the very front of the ring. A few people stood in the middle, including a very passionate Native American boy wearing a tunic and the oddest pair of pants Carlos had ever seen. Another boy had stopped his train of thought mid-sentence and everyone had stopped talking loudly to hear this strange boy speak. In voice like a midnight breeze, the Native waxed poetic about the world before pollution. 

“I fall asleep easily at night. I dream of sun, of a lighthouse that was not a lighthouse. Of a world that is not anything at all. Or perhaps a world that might someday be, of things yet to come. We might see tall, towering concrete buildings in the day, full of people and full of things we do not need and should not need. But at night, I see the place I was born, a small desert community, where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and…” the Native boy trailed, his hands mid motion, mouth poised to continue, his eyes fixated on…

...on Carlos.

(Fey grinned. “Grampa?”

Abuelo nodded and smiled. “Grampa.”

Clasping his hands together, Grampa sighed and swooned, “I fell in love instantly! How could I not?”)

Carlos gave a warm smile, sensing the other might have gotten stage fright, and was rewarded with the other blushing a bright red. Biting his lip, the boy finished, lamely, “And… um yeah.” He coughed and everybody snapped out of their reverie to whistle, clap, and laugh, bursting into vivid conversation all over again. 

The latino boy was pulled into a discussion about the current issues surrounding the US’ involvement in Vietnam, but he kept glancing around him, looking for the Native American. But before long, the next speech had begun and Carlos had forgotten about the wide-eyed strange boy in the excitement of the day.  
__________

As the day progressed, Carlos caught wind of two things; number one being that he and the team were selling, as a student had put it, “the good stuff”; and number two, that someone was asking around for information on him. After trying, and failing, to snoop, Carlos begged Rochelle to find out just what the hell was going on. He didn’t want a cop on his tail, for God’s sake. Carlos bit his nails and felt genuinely paranoid, constantly feeling like he was being watched, until lunch time when Rochelle reported back with some strange news. The person asking around about Carlos was apparently the Native American boy from that morning.

“But all I did was smile at him! Why would he be looking for me?” Carlos asked, puzzled at the odd behaviour. 

Rochelle popped her bubblegum and traced a pattern on the picnic table they were sitting on. “Beats me, but he wants to know all about you. Like, who you are, where you’re from, what you do. I guess some people decided to have some fun and started telling him that you’re a ‘scientist’.” She air quoted the word and popped her gum again. “Maybe he just wants some of our stuff.”

Looking out onto the sea of faces, Carlos pursed his lips. “Maybe.”

Their ‘maybe’ turned out to be half correct. At 7:52, Carlos felt eyes on him and saw the boy with the tunic approach the team’s van, hands clutching his bag strap tightly. The boy wet his lips and gave Carlos a goofy smile. “Hi Carlos.”

Carlos crossed his arms, decidedly unamused, and the boy’s smile dimmed. It was, frankly, kind of creepy that the boy already knew Carlos’ name and where he could find him. Unfortunately for Carlos, the Native American was a complete mystery. Staring the other down, Carlos took a stance and growled, “What do you want?”

The Native American bit his lip and rocked on his heels, a muddled mix of coyness and actual nervousness filling his eyes. “I wanted to meet you.” Carlos snorted and frowned.

“Well there are less weird ways of going about it. You nearly gave me a heart attack! I thought the police were looking for me.” 

The boy clenched his teeth in distress and sounded genuine when he muttered, “Sorry! It’s just…” he had that coy expression on his face again. “You seem pretty…” he glanced around, before leaning in a murmuring, with a sultry grin, “...interesting.” He winked.

Carlos flushed pink and stiffened at that. Oh. _Oh_. He was one of _those_. Though Carlos knew all about those people because well. He was one of them. With this new information, the latino man found it difficult to figure out just what it was he was supposed to do. Or say. So he just settled with a stammered, “O-oh.”

Seemingly satisfied with this answer, the Native boy leaned back again and sat down at the picnic table nearby. Carlos followed in a daze, plopping ungracefully into the seat across from the boy. Examining his nails, the boy spoke rapidly, “I’m Cecil, by the way. I didn’t mean to make you upset earlier. Gods, I’m sorry. But you know, if you’re curious about something sometimes it’s best to ask other people? At least that’s what my mother used to say. So, tell me about yourself, Carlos the Scientist? Are you actually a scientist or is it because-”

Overwhelmed by the Cecil’s blathering, Carlos blurted, “Are you even real? Jesus!”

Cecil quickly responded with, “Oh no, I’m not Jesus, thank you for asking.”

The ‘scientist groaned and dragged his hands down his face. “No, I mean, gosh.” Slapping his hands on the table, Carlos explained, “People like you, you know. _Like you_.” Cecil’s brow furrowed and then shot up again in understanding. “You can go to jail, you know? Like, aren’t you afraid of that? All for doing, well, that with them? 

The Native just blinked and then laughed with gusto. Carlos stared in exasperation. Wiping his eyes, Cecil giggled, “You mean could I get in trouble for being adorable and liking _guys_ and _sleeping with them_? Yes. But,” and suddenly Cecil had this gleam in his eye, hands gesturing wildly already. “This is the time, Carlos! Open spaces, man, and peace and love. Free love, I might add. I think things are changing.” He turned and started digging through his bag, pulling out three dollars and putting them on the table. Cecil slid them forward and propped his head on folded hands. “Besides, I’m pretty sure you can be arrested for dealing with Mary Jane too, Mr. Scientist.” 

Carlos looked around before pocketing the money. He gestured to Cecil to follow him to the van, feeling strangely giddy like a kid who knows they are are doing wrong but doesn’t care. When they settled into the back of the van, Carlos pulled out his stash and doled out the amount that Cecil had payed for. He watched as Cecil examined the interior of their van and before he could stop himself, he blurted, “Do you want to stay awhile?” 

Cecil smiled and shook his baggie at Carlos, taking a seat on a nearby pillow. “I’d love to, sugar.” 

(“Wait.”

Abuelo stopped talking and looked over at Fey. She was agape and stared at her grandfather with new eyes. “We’re just gonna gloss over this?” He looked confused and she waved her arms at him. “Hello? You were a drug dealer?!” Her abuelo’s eyes got wide and he immediately began to protest. Grampa just laughed loudly. 

“Honey, _everybody_ was doing drugs in the 60s. They’re lying if they tell you they didn’t.”

Marv’s eyes were wide and he breathed out, “Cooooool!” 

Their abuelo rubbed his face, his voice coming out distorted. “I’m not proud of it and times were different.” He pointed at his two grandchildren. “I do not want to hear you using this as an excuse to smoke.” Leaning back in his chair, he folded his hands over his pot belly. “I probably lost a good few brain cells smoking so much. Your grampa rode the magic dragon just as often.” Fey couldn’t help but laugh at her abuelo’s obvious embarrassment. 

That laughter turned to mortification, however, when grampa leaned in toward abuelo and murmured, “That’s not the only thing I was riding.” His grandchildren looked horrified. Marv put his hands over his ears and sang “Lalalal!” and Fey just stared up at the ceiling willing herself to die.

“I so didn’t need to hear that.”

Abuelo shook his head and grampa giggled obnoxiously. Once everybody managed to control themselves, Marv asked, “So what did you do after that?”

Grampa poured himself another glass of lemonade and eagerly said, “Well, we hung out! And talked. And smoked. Oh!” Grampa flapped his hands agitatedly. “Kids, if you ever smoke, be careful of who you take it from and what is in it. God, Carlos, do you remember that one trip I had?” He slumped in his seat, staring into his lemonade. “I thought I was gonna die. What was that again?”

“Angel dust.” Abuelo answered around his cup. Marv frowned.

“What happened?”

Abuelo and grampa shared a look, conversing without words, before grampa looked back toward Fey and Marv. He delicately took a sip of lemonade. “We’ll get to it.”

Abuelo suddenly perked up and gestured to his granddaughter’s notebook. “Oh! Fey, honey, write this down.” Fey leaned forward started to scribble. Taking a deep breath, an excited gleam in his eye, Abuelo announced, “While we were there, we saw every demonstration and speech we could, including…” He paused for dramatic effect, hands outstretched. Fey rolled her eyes. Grampa had clearly rubbed off on abuelo over the years. “Norman Mailer!”

The two grandchildren also shared a look, but of confusion and not conspiracy. “Who?” 

Grampa swatted abuelo’s thigh. “They won’t know who that is!” he scolded. 

Abuelo crossed his arms, crestfallen that neither Fey nor Marv shared his enthusiasm for ‘Norman Mailer’. In consolation, grampa patted his leg and handed him a pecan sandy. 

After Fey made her notes and abuelo had been soothed with two more pecan sandies, she inquired, “So, what happened after the teach-in ended?” 

“Your grandfather,” Abuelo shot grampa an exasperated, but fond, glance, “Begged me to give him a ride. But really, he just wanted to come with me.”)  
__________

May 23, 1965

“Just to Tucson! You said you’re headed towards Orleans, right?”

Cecil stood shifting from foot to foot outside Carlos’ van, a small suitcase in hand. His hopeful expression made the latino man little weak in the knees. 

While they were not the last ones at the university, the team was eager to leave, heading to their next destination. It was Rochelle who insisted that they go to New Orleans and experience, as she put it, “the atmosphere, the culture, the food!” Carlos was ready to leave the cool, damp West coast too. Though, if he was honest with himself, he wasn’t ready to leave Cecil. There was something endearing about the Native American boy that made Carlos’ heart thump a bit harder and he really did want to get to know him better. Despite trying to think logically, the scientist did not make a neutral, unbiased decision. Instead, he took a leap of faith. 

Reaching out his hand, he greeted Cecil with a smile, pulled him into the van, and fate took care of the rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So what do you think? Is the formatting weird? How does it sound? I really do thrive on comments, good or bad, and I would love some feedback!

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by Goddess-In-Green's Cecil design and thought "Man, he would make a great hippie." And then I watched Forest Gump and thus this story was born! "Shiny, Happy People" is probably the best song to listen to if you are reading this. And I will warn you that I am a slow writer but this piece will get finished! From this chapter on, it will switch between present day and dates in the past. So tell me what you think?


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